Submitted by Lou Pickney

Brandon Baxter and Matt Douglas warmed up the crowd right as the 7:30p.m. bell time hit. Baxter did a good job handling the ring announcer/hypeman duties.

Tate Twins beat the Best Friends (approx. 15 minutes)

The audio system temporarily crashed as the Best Friends made their way onto the field, so they killed time by pantomiming the throwing of a first pitch by Trent Beretta to Chuck Taylor. After watching Best of the Super Juniors, it was nice to see a Beretta match without hearing that grating Roppongi Vice song.

Sonjay Dutt pinned Jamin Olivencia (approx 10 minutes)

Dutt won after a tornado DDT & top rope splash.

Thea Trinidad pinned Lei’d Tapa (approx 6 minutes)

Nothing match. As I noted elsewhere, Trinidad is very attractive, though her beating the much larger Tapa out of nowhere was low on believability.

Moose pinned Kevin Matthews (approx 11 minutes)

After the original pinfall of Moose by Matthews, who had his feet on the ropes for leverage, it was overturned by a second ref who came in from the opposite side of where it happened. The match was restarted and, almost immediately, Moose hit the spear and got the pin. It was great that the show had announced time limits, though for some reason this match was one fall with a 15 minute time limit.

INTERMISSION

Chris Mordetzky won by submission over Dustin Star (approx 11 minutes) with the Master Lock

The ref did the “raise the arm and drop it” routine on Star, and after one drop he called for the bell, so it wasn’t a tapout or verbal submission by the babyface Star. In contrast to Moose’s 1/15 match, this was one fall with a 45 minute time limit.

Brandon Baxter introduced Jim Cornette, who announced to the crowd that there would be a 10 bell salute/moment of silence for Dusty Rhodes. The crowd was respectfully quiet for this.

Karl Anderson and Luke Gallows beat the New Heavenly Bodies in approx 8 minutes

Cornette cut a scathing promo on the NHB before the match, essentially calling them out for not exactly having the proper physique to use the Heavenly Bodies name. The finish saw the NHB try to use a foreign object to cheat, which led Cornette to get up to the ringside table to stooge it off to the referee. When that was ignored, Cornette soon after waylaid one of the NHB guys in the back with an incredibly loud tennis racket shot which led to the pin.